Monthly Archives: January 2014

Life Science Leader’s Rob Wright has a great profile on TransCelerate BioPharma and their efforts to modernize the drug development and clinical trial landscape. TransCelerate is a nonprofit organization made up of 18 innovate biopharmaceutical companies dedicated to collaborating across the industry to find ways to simplify and accelerate the discovery of new medicines. As the article notes, the challenge involved is enormous: With combined annual revenues in excess of $300 billion and nearly 800,000 employees Read More >

The FDA approved 24 novel drugs last year by our count, in line with average approvals for the last ten years but down from the decade-high approvals seen in 2012. Our count is a bit lower than the FDA’s count of 27 new approvals, because we did not include imaging agents like Navidea’s Lymphoseek, or reformulations like J&J’s Simponi Aria. 2013 was the first year the breakthrough-designated therapies were approved, with three breakthrough therapies approved: Gilead’s Read More >

The public comment period for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2014 proposal on the Renewable Volume Obligations (RVO) closed Tuesday January 28, 2014, with the agency receiving 16,575 comments. On behalf of its members, BIO submitted over fifty pages of comments, stressing that the proposed changes to the RFS would be detrimental to the cellulosic and advanced biofuels industry. In a recent press release, Brent Erickson, executive vice president of BIO’s Industrial & Environmental Section, stated Read More >

The Independent Payment Advisory Board is bad medicine for patient care, deficit reduction and containing Medicare costs. This board, consisting of 15 bureaucrats appointed by the President, has been given the power to make decisions affecting patients’ quality of care, with almost no oversight and no means for challenging its decisions. IPAB must be repealed. There is widespread support among patient advocacy groups and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle for full Read More >

In Discover magazine’s Collide-a-Scape blog, Keith Kloor writes about Why GMOs Matter. Kloor reflects on the debate around GMOs and the various positions articulated by others such as University of Wyoming’s Andrew Kniss, Berkley’s Michael Eisen and Author Ramez Naam. Kniss believes that the GMO debate is overlooking an essential voice: “While activist groups, scientists, and journalists yell past each other in this debate, the people who are actually using and benefiting from the technology are largely ignored. So too are Read More >